By Button Poetry
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Adam Falkner, performing at Honey in Minneapolis.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
finally the poem I will not write I am
00:06
in fifth grade wrestling and a brush
00:08
pile of dead leaves with a now dead
00:11
friend weep all the hardening knots in
00:14
each other’s gym shorts laughs and rive
00:16
until the leaf pile is no longer a pile
00:19
but a kicked in hive of tiny heaving
00:21
lungs soft stink of new sweat and
00:24
rotting wood were dissertation later and
00:28
six girlfriends past that I wake up in a
00:31
tougher City with new friends who remind
00:33
me of my father I look at men with
00:35
chiseled jaws on loud trains in new ways
00:38
or rather old ways but with less at
00:41
stake I wonder if they ever hovered
00:44
their gaze over me for an instant too
00:46
long too if the Flex tricep peeking from
00:49
beneath my own black t-shirt makes them
00:51
dance their eyes and to pretend reading
00:54
material to I freeze snapshots of
00:57
beautiful strangers pin them in the
00:59
high-ceilinged hallways inside me near
01:01
the faces of everyone who knows me by a
01:03
different name in a different town and a
01:06
different version of my father none of
01:07
which are the Christmas he got loaded
01:09
and started yelling about how gay people
01:11
give him the willies rooted in Willy boy
01:14
or sissy a name I’ve tried fighting and
01:18
drinking and away since sixth
01:20
grade a badge I’ve buried amidst brass
01:23
edges and ball fields and rap songs
01:26
still from beneath this goose down of a
01:28
bearded new man soft snore into my
01:31
shoulders right teacup hairy thigh laid
01:35
heavy across my lap I pecked the first
01:37
lines of a poem I will not finish
01:40
another Willy a sissy it raises its hand
01:44
draws a blank curls its fists slinks
01:49
into the night
01:52
[Applause]
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video